Archive for the ‘sound waves’ Tag
To watch a fascinating video from the New York Times, click http://nyti.ms/1SKjTJ5
It’s all over the internet: Einstein was right – there are such things as gravitational waves.
In a seemingly impossible experiment, a group of astrophysicists announced on Thursday, February 11, 2016 that they now had aural evidence of gravitational waves. An international mega-group of 1000 scientists published a report in Physical Review Letters confirming their findings.
For those of you who might be asking, “What are gravitational waves?”, here’s a quick definition. They’re ripples in spacetime created by any particle or object with mass. Einstein predicted them in his theory of relativity in 1916.
In a classic case of “if a tree falls in the woods, does it make a sound,” two black holes collided so impossibly far away – a billion light years – and only now is the Earth receiving the noise from that cataclysmic event.
Two antennas designed for receiving any sound a gravitational wave would generate, located in Washington State and Louisiana, and part of LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory), picked up a brief chirp on September 14, 2015.
This event’s also a significant achievement for astronomy, where so much is dependent upon what can been seen. This experiment delivers another dimension from which to observe and measure the universe.
If you’d like to read more about this important confirmation of Einstein’s theory of relativity, here are a few sources:
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Credit: ee.princeton.edu
Here’s another wonderful video from Dennis Overbye at The New York Times. In it, he explains how time and light partner up to offer a show from nature centuries after it occurred.
Light, in space, is literally a living memory of events long past. There’s a profound statement at the accompanying article’s end, stating that even the light on our face shine forever.
Can you imagine? That glorious day at the beach where you smiled at the sun as it reflected on the waves and your face? That’ll live on, in the shape of light rays. And so, whatever light touches, it has the ability to record and send off our particular experiences. Using light to record humanity? There’s been speculation with sound waves and how others out there will find us via our words, sounds, broadcasts. How would they make sense of our pictures? They’d arrive apart, since light travels so much faster than sound ever could.
Now imagine if both the sound and light waves intersected, but with completely different meanings. Light from the 16th century paired with sounds from this one – this jumbled mess as message. Who would read it? How might it be interpreted?
Light is absorbed when it encounters obstacles, such as black holes. Light waves, from a fairly concentrated source on Earth traveling outward, face the possibility of reaching entirely different destinations. Some of those particles risk absorption, but others fly free. A patchwork image received by an off world interpreter might wind up with a Swiss cheesy image not entirely accurate of what it was meant to represent. Perhaps, too, that’s what we might receive here at the home planet.
Darkness is the absence of light. What gives some light waves the ability to survive while others terminate, creating darkness? Or is darkness merely another form of light? Is it light that the eyes on this planet have not evolved to discern? What forms out there might interpret our version of light as darkness?
Just a little something for your minds to unravel as you attempt to rest your weary brains for the night.
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The New York Times had an excellent article on the possibilities of life Out There. You know, all that space that the universe occupies. According to Carl Sagan, there was no reason not to expect life that was comparable to humans. But if you asked the competition, evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr, we were it. Sure, it was reasonable to expect primordial soup in other locales, with perhaps a few vegetables thrown in for variety, but Mayr was steadfast in his beliefs that the chances for humanlike life anywhere but here was slim to nil.
Naturally, there’s also that school of belief that attests to aliens living among us, including the abductees who’ve been tested and probed. Those unexplained sightings of strange ships hovering over dark highways in remote locations – that can’t be fake, eh? There has to be something real under Area 51, right? After all, why do they protect it so fiercely?
If you ask me, I’d bet the rent on life existing outside our little blue dot. Compare it to the lottery. The higher the stakes, the more players become involved. Eventually, a number’s picked and a winner is paraded before cameras as the newest bazillionaire. On occasion, though, there’s more than one winner, and regularly three or four. I’m no mathematician, but what are the chances that several people will bounce into the local gas station, drop $20.00 on gas and another $3.00 bucks for a few Powerball tickets and all come out winners? It happens. So why not expect life on other planets?
Carl Sagan maintained that sound waves generated from TV and radio drifted out among the stars would signal to intrepid space voyagers our existence. That was detailed in Contact. Those sound waves possess properties that cause them to stretch and grow as they wander further from their source. By the time those waves are detected, what discernible information remains attached to these signals would be challenging to interpret. But then again, the right exoplanetary scientist might find them an intriguing prospect: thin signals meaning what? A project to research, to turn heads into another direction to discover their source? Our planet, uncovered at last?
What’s to say there isn’t a planet with inhabitants who share the dreams of finding others, only to be told the possibilities are so incredibly remote it isn’t worth a bother?
Here’s how I see it: out there, far from Earth, a soul ponders what bioforms rose and prospered elsewhere in the abyss of space. Technologically advanced to send out space probes, this soul launches a machine capable of seeking clues, if not evidence. Time passes, the soul dies, but other scientists take this soul’s place and keep on with the vigil. Eventually, the machine wanders so far away from its home planet that even its trail of crumbs grows cold. After a great deal of time, the machine is lost to memory and passes into legend, but the language on the foreign planet evolves to the point where even the legend transforms into a mystery and eventually forgotten. Meanwhile, life on that planet succumbs to its own evolution as its inhabitants face other issues that seem more pressing or trivial, but interest in further explorations has shriveled as it’s become necessary to focus on the lack of rain, food, or a dwindling resource that is elemental to the stability of life on said planet. Or, life for the other planet’s inhabitants is fulfilling, and therefore interest plummets because all needs are met and exceeded. Curiosity fades as the inhabitants indulge in The Good Life and place high importance cultivating perpetual happiness.
On a peaceful September morning, blue skies except for drifting patches of cumulus clouds, a flash streaks across the sky. Whatever caused it crashes into a suburb of a medium-sized city, resulting in a fair amount of damage to both the landscape and the object. Upon cautious examination, its solid core leads Earth scientists to believe it’s not merely silicon. Placed in the hands of a particularly observant scientist, a barely imperceptible vibration reveals a secret only a sensitive hand would notice. “Hey,” says the Earth scientist, “I think we got something here…”
No alien spaceships, no apocalyptical force, only a simple device, badly damaged and time-worn, offers a clue to a glorious civilization similar to our own, whose own culture is seemingly lost to the wastelands of space and disbelieving souls.
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Here’s a mystery for you: How can one recognize a sound if one doesn’t know what one is listening for?
Envision the sound of water dripping. To us, it’s immediately identifiable. A persistent plunk of droplets, often landing in unwanted places. That faucet with the worn valve, a pipe’s joinery weakening, even raindrops plopping a steady rhythm – all instantly recognizable, regardless of different circumstances. It’s water. We know that.
Now imagine that sound broadcast over light-years’ worth of distances. A resident of another galaxy hears it. Perhaps on his or her planet, water evaporates or freezes. Will this off-world listener misinterpret our ambient noises to be a distinct language?
As depicted in the movie, “Contact,” our broadcasts words, laughter, music, applause and other activity drifted out beyond our solar system’s outer reaches. We only know what passes for language here on Earth. How do other life forms communicate? Perhaps applause might not be recognized as having a function. Music might not exist at all. Laughing might be a language all unto itself.
We allege that our off-world companions might exhibit the same traits as we humans do. It’s only natural, since we don’t have any standard method of comparison. Our Earth is filled with a virtual cacophony of sounds, each bearing a unique interpretation, all providing information we need to assess our reaction, if any is necessary. How, then, do we describe to our off-world friend what exactly we are hearing when we cannot communicate the definition of it?
What happens when we hear our first off-world sounds from a habited planet? A friendly gesture might resemble explosions. Our experience tells us we are in danger. Our foreign friend freaks out when charged with guns and bombs, and then what? The Off-Worlder retreats or worse, dies.
Sound waves travel differently given the amount of resistance they encounter. A bell changes its tune as it rises in altitude. Temperature also affects sound. String instruments hate the cold. Drums can be cooperative, although animal skin drumheads shrink or expand with the temperature and humidity.
An off-world sound brought to Earth can lose its characteristics unique to its planet and present an entirely changed audio experience. How to identify a sound never before heard? Good question. I thought about that and wondered how I’d react. I’m curious and I’d investigate. I’d do that, though, only if the sound registers in my ear. If my cat ran off or the neighbor’s dogs started barking like crazy, and nothing was around to set them off, then what? Or if that sound destroyed object like a laser – a highly concentrated,focused beam of sound silently destroyed selected targets, I’d seriously worry.
Sounds like a mystery to me…
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Moon, Stars and Beyond 